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Thursday, December 15, 2011

Rush Limbaugh Wants Black Politicians to Be Sure to Have Their Slave Passes

Rush
Limbaugh earned his racist bonafides a long time ago. He is also an
existentially and unrepentantly ugly person. Therefore, his suggestion that the head of the Congressional Black Caucus needs to get a slave pass in order to “get off” the Democratic plantation is not at all a surprise. Moreover, that there are millions of petit authoritarians
who pray at his sick and twisted mantle of Angry White Male
Conservatism, is also not a surprise. Their love is just a symptom of
America’s cultural rot, and a dysfunctional political discourse, one
identified decades ago by the noted political scientist and historian Richard Hofstadter.

Of
course, I will never understand why any self-respecting black person
(or person of color more generally) would get in bed with the racially
resentful, and bigoted strain of populism, that is the Tea Party GOP.
And that black Conservatives reproduce the language of white supremacy,
with the idea that principled, reflective, and politically sophisticated, utility maximizing
black people–who have decided that the Democratic Party is more aligned
with their interests–are on a “plantation,” is one part racial
Stockholm syndrome, and two parts selling out for the sake of a
dollar…as well as the psychic wages of a pat or two on the metaphorical
head from their overlords.

Abstractions
are easy to use in a game where the scoring of cheap political points
is the goal. The low brow rhetoric that passes for reasoned political discourse in the Right-wing echo chamber is masterful for its ability to provoke, use symbolically rich speech, repetition, moral clarity, as well as certitude. In all, the Eliminationists of the Right-wing are expert propagandists.

However,
it is easy to invoke a thing, when one does not have to face the
reality of it head on. A skilled rhetorician can paint a picture with
words that move the crowd; but, their power can also be subverted when
the gimmick is exposed–when the audience sees the literal thing that is
being used as an allusion and metaphorical prop. The illusion is broken.
The magic is gone.

Rush
Limbaugh loves to talk about black people and slavery. It is a fetish
of his. While we may not cure him of this obsession, nor break the
Svengali-like hold that Limbaugh has on his cult members, we can examine
an actual example of the “slave passes” he so casually evoked last
week:

Transcription:
My Boy Mack has my Permission to sleep in a house in Bedon’s Alley,
hired by his Mother this ticket is good for two months from this date
Sarah H. Savage Sep ber 19th, 1843

I
wonder if the Right-wing populists who fawn over Rush Limbaugh would
find such references so funny if they could actually see a slave pass
with their own eyes, or read some of the actual handwriting that
attempted to reduce grown adults into children, human property who were
limited in the most basic exercise of their rights?

White
populist conservatives would probably sneer and reverse this
truth-seeking into some twisted claim of “white victimology,” and “angry
black people,” who are “unfair” and “emotional.” In fact, there are
likely many conservatives, who in another decade would fancy themselves
owners of human property, kings of the plantation, where the darkies
knew their place, and everything was a Neo-Confederate, Southern GOP,
Tea Party wet dream.

Their
love of such abuses of history aside does not mean that we ought not to
confront conservatives about their fictions at every opportunity, to
hold them accountable.Please
indulge me some private-public talk for a moment. My black folks, we
need to do a better job of protecting our history, the narratives that
are generated about it, and how our struggle is made the fodder for
political games by conservatives and liberals alike. No other group’s
freedom struggle and suffering (our Jewish brothers and sisters
especially, are to be held up as exemplars for how to protect one’s
master story) is mocked with such ease, frequency, or with so few
consequences.

These
slave passes are not impersonal abstractions, curiosities of history,
without meaning or weight. Slave passes were the naked and obvious
demonstration of power by Whites, and the ability (or so they believed)
to control black people–your kin and family–as human property from the
cradle to the grave:

This
is a slave pass and marriage acknowledgement from A. Greer to John
Neely allowing the marriage of one of his male slaves to one of Neely’s
female slaves, permitting that they do not let the marriage interfere
with their work.

Where
is the outrage? My people, my black folks, or are you so tired, the
calluses so deep, that you have forgotten how to be upset?

History
stares you in the eyes: Rush Limbaugh and his brethren slap you in the
face every time they channel the glorious and proud history of black and
brown folks, our sheroes and heroes, for their nefarious and dishonest
ends. And you do nothing.

And some wonder, why in America, conservatism and racism, are one in the same.

Editor
and founder of the blog We Are Respectable Negroes which has been
featured by the NY Times, the Utne Reader, and The Atlantic Monthly.
Writing under a pseudonym, Chauncey DeVega's essays on race, popular
culture, and politics have appeared in various books, as well as on such
sites as the Washington Post's The Root and Popmatters.